Plans have officially been filed to develop a portion of DC’s Reservation 13.

Donatelli Development filed with the Zoning Commission for two-mixed use buildings and upwards of 344 residential units on two parcels at the Stadium-Armory Metro station (map). The development site is a surface parking lot used by the Department of General Services, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Health, and part of the 67-acre site known as Reservation 13.

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The development will sit on two parcels and consist of two buildings — one with a maximum of 91 residential units and another with upwards of 253 units. Both buildings will have retail, as well as underground parking.

The first parcel, F-1, is bounded by 19th Street, Burke Street and C Street. The second parcel, G-1, is bounded by 19th Street, C Street, Massachusetts Avenue and 20th Street.

The project is located in the Anacostia Waterfront Development Zone, which requires that 30 percent of all developed residential units must be affordable. GTM Architects is the project architect.

The filing of plans is a step forward for the development of Reservation 13. When the city put out a request of proposals in the 2000s for the site, they intended for one developer to plan the entire 67 acres. However, things didn’t move forward as planned, and instead of one large plan, the city offered up the lot to developers in small parcels, starting first with the two lots that Donatelli is developing.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/donatelli_plans_344-unit_mixed-use_project_for_hill_east/10807

1 Comment

skidrowedc@gmail.com said at 8:19 pm on Wednesday January 27, 2016:

The first rendering is pretty convincing—one building, clearly, but broken up into smaller components, with deep shadowlines and nice materials. Not inventive or imaginative, and one worries about the translation to reality (cheaper materials, dumbed-down and flattened details, scores of exhaust caps, etc.), but the design shows talent and integrity.

But then, in the second rendering, we have an obviously fake “Main Street”. Same idea, presumably—to break down the mass—but completely unconvincing. Very suburban “town center,” which might make sense in the urbanistic wastelands of the Beltway, but not in Hill East. If you’re going to play that game, GTM and Donatelli, you need to try a lot harder than the rendering indicates, especially since it, too, will be subject to the degradations of the process. If it looks this unconvincing in the rendering, it will only look even worse in reality. DC doesn’t need another Rhode Island Row.